Dr Vivek Murthy: loneliness is public health risk

Dr Vivek Murthy: loneliness is public health risk

‘There are real consequences to our physical and mental health’

Katty Kay speaks to Dr Vivek Murthy, former US Surgeon-General about the challenge posed by loneliness and isolation in the modern world. Dr. Murthy, the first person of Indian descent in the post, was appointed during the second Obama administration. He then returned in 2021, serving until the beginning of this year.

The Surgeon-General’s job is to provide the American public with the best scientific information available on how to improve their health and reduce the risk of illness and injury. They also oversee the country’s 6,000 public health professionals who respond to national health threats and public health crises.

It was during his second term, under the Biden administration, that Dr. Murthy first started expressing concern about the impact of social media on the mental health and wellbeing of young people. He described the loneliness epidemic of social isolation as a risk to public health akin to smoking and diabetes.

In this interview, he examines the scale of the challenge posed by loneliness and how artificial intelligence, or AI, on the one hand is being used to tackle it, but may also be simultaneously adding to the problem. The Interview brings you conversations with people shaping our world, from all over the world. The best interviews from the BBC. You can listen on the BBC World Service, Mondays and Wednesdays at 0700 GMT. Or you can listen to The Interview as a podcast, out twice a week on BBC Sounds or wherever you get your podcasts.

Presenter: Katty Kay Producers: Ben Cooper, Aiden Johnson and Ilyas Kirmani Editor: Justine Lang

Get in touch with us on email TheInterview@bbc.co.uk and use the hashtag #TheInterviewBBC on social media.

(Image: Surgeon General Vivek Murthy Credit: Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)

Jaksot(1827)

Cheng Siwei - Former Vice Chairman, Standing Committee, NPC, China

Cheng Siwei - Former Vice Chairman, Standing Committee, NPC, China

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Olli Rehn - European Commissioner for Economic and Monetary Affairs

Olli Rehn - European Commissioner for Economic and Monetary Affairs

Sarah Montague is in Brussels to talk to the man with the unenviable job of finding a way out of Europe's financial crisis. He is Olli Rehn, Europe's Commissioner for Economic and Monetary Affairs. It's nearly two years since the Greek crisis first blew up; and in that time seven heads of Eurozone governments have been replaced; there have been at least 15 European summits; and any number of plans; and yet, Greece is still on the verge of defaulting and the German Chancellor Angela Merkel has warned this coming year will "undoubtedly" be harder than the last. What has been achieved and are we any closer to resolving the crisis?(Image: European Union Economic and Monetary Affairs Commissioner Olli Rehn. Credit: Reuters)

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Dr Devi Shetty - Indian heart surgeon

Dr Devi Shetty - Indian heart surgeon

Stephen Sackur speaks to a brilliant heart surgeon - veteran of more than 30,000 operations - but his growing international reputation rests less on his medical skill, more on his business brain. He wants to do for major surgery what Henry Ford did for the motor car - make it affordable for the masses, by means of mass production. He's building what he calls medical cities across India and beyond - but can this vision of delivering a public good for private profit really change healthcare around the world?

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